Cellulose Grafted with Hyperbranched Polyester Biocomposites: Characterization and In Vitro Assessment of Cellular Uptake

The biphase cellulosic biocomposites is used in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications. At present, use of biomacromolecules, such as microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and hyperbranched polyesters (HBPE), is also needed. Furthermore, MCC has found applications alone and/or in combination with other materials to prepare valuable biomaterials. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reports of the application of the HBPE, generations 2 and 4, based on bis(hydroxymethyl) propionic acid as grafting agent (crosslinker) via potassium persulphate (KPS) –initiated radical grafting method. This work intends to develop new types of hybrid composites for biomedical applications based on grafted MCC with HBPE. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), dynamic light scattering (DLS), x-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were applied to study physicochemical properties. Uptake by the in vitro cell line (normal fibroblast BJ1) of the samples in culture was assessed by MTT assay. The results showed that the grafted MCC had particle size of 350 and 289 d.nm when normalized to the particle size of the used HBPE generations (HBPE-2, 16-OH and HBPE-4, 64-OH, respectively) and compared with that of raw MCC (276 d.nm). In this way, HBPE-4 was introduced into the system and contributed as they should to enhance thermal stability, the attachment, and the proliferating of BJ1 cells in the hybrid composites comparing to the others. Therefore, the incorporation of HBPE-4 into cellulose biocomposites is a new way to obtain high performance biomaterials.